I finally got my balls back!!!

[Brian Rupnow]

Things are progressing well. I made an executive decision this morning that it was just too bitterly cold out in my main garage where I usually test my engines, so the governor and the Webster were moved in to my engineering reference table where it is toasty and warm. I thought it would be clever to make the governor arm from 1/8" diameter cold rolled steel, with a sliding adjustable block on it. That lets me change the length from the governor arm pivot out out whatever I need the linkage attachment point to be, very simply. Then I decided it would also be nice to be able to adjust the length of the 1/16" diameter link between the governor arm and the carburetor arm, so another small round addition with set screw was added. I lied in the last post where I said the welding rod which I would make the link from was 2 mm. It isn't. Actually, it is 1/16" diameter. I thought it looked a bit "fat" in the solid model, but I didn't go out to the garage to check. Now, onward to build a new carburetor arm for the other end of the "link" to attach to.

 

[Brian Rupnow]

And here we reach a successful conclusion.
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeyIhzOwhq0&feature=youtu.be[/ame]

 

[Brian Rupnow]

And---If anyone wonders why I didn't use the fancy shaped connector link, it was deflecting too much and the movement of the governor lever was not getting through "cleanly" to the carburetor throttle lever because of that. The issue of different travels between the governor arm and the throttle arm was solved by having the easily adjustable connection point on the governor arm.

 

[Cogsy]

It works well Brian, but I think there might be a little room for improvement (not a criticism, more like a challenge). It works perfectly in the over-rev situation, but what I can see at the moment is that wide open throttle (so max engine power in theory) is only achieved at very low RPM, virtually stopped even, with little chance of the engine recovering RPM from that point.

I would think that having the throttle go wide open in response to a much smaller drop in RPM from 'set' would allow the engine a much better chance of responding to applied loads. I'm not sure how this would be achieved with a fly ball governor though.

 

[canadianhorsepower]

And---If anyone wonders why I didn't use the fancy shaped connector link, it was deflecting too much and the movement of the governor lever was not getting through "cleanly" to the carburetor throttle lever because of that. The issue of different travels between the governor arm and the throttle arm was solved by having the easily adjustable connection point on the governor arm.

Why did you not use this on the RUPNOW engine ?
it would have work :hDe:

 

[Brian Rupnow]

Luc--the Rupnow Engine already has a governor on it--and it does work. It works on the concept of a hit and miss engine, where the governor disables the exhaust valve to keep the engine from firing. I wanted to see if a governor hooked up to the throttle lever would work. A hit and miss engine fires, then coasts for a number of revolutions. A conventional engine as in my current project still fires on every other revolution of the crankshaft, even when being governed.

 

[Brian Rupnow]

It works well Brian, but I think there might be a little room for improvement (not a criticism, more like a challenge). It works perfectly in the over-rev situation, but what I can see at the moment is that wide open throttle (so max engine power in theory) is only achieved at very low RPM, virtually stopped even, with little chance of the engine recovering RPM from that point.

I would think that having the throttle go wide open in response to a much smaller drop in RPM from 'set' would allow the engine a much better chance of responding to applied loads. I'm not sure how this would be achieved with a fly ball governor though.

It can be done, but having the engine go "wide open" at the slightest drop in revs would make the governor do a lot of "hunting" while trying to keep the revs at a constant under load and no load conditions. It's quite amazing the number of different ways a mechanical governor can be configured, and it all has to do with the geometry of the linkage arms. As I said in one of my videos, not everything is scaleable 100%. If it was a larger more powerful engine, the throttle lever wouldn't have to move as much to bring the revs back up. As an interesting aside, I grew up in a sawmilling community, where we had a sawmill running a huge steam traction engine, two mills running Caterpillar diesel engines, and one mill running a water turbine. I don't remember too much about the water turbine mill, but I have read that flyball governors were used to control the sluice gates, letting more water through the turbine when higher amounts of power were required, and shutting the sluice gate part way when the higher power was not required. ( I never seen that). However, both the steam engine and the Caterpillar diesels ran on flyball governors hooked to the steam admission valve or whatever passes for a throttle on a diesel engine. Under no load conditions these engines ran along at a relatively low constant speed, but when a 20" white pine log was forced into the mainsaw, you could hear those engines "bark" from a mile away as the governors opened the throttles to whatever degree was required to cut those logs without dropping the rpm of the diesels or the steam engine. As soon as the log came out of the mainsaw, the engines would immediately return to their 'nominal' low speed setting. I walked past these mills every day on my way to public school, and can clearly remembering the loud "bark" of these mills when the saw bit into a log.

 

[Brian Rupnow]

At 4.38 minutes into this video, you will see a home brewed fan controlled governor on a model T powered buzz saw. I have never seen this done before except on small single cylinder engines, but it seems to be very effective.
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LMv_Y4axYw[/ame]